Where others' failings are our petty amusements.

[June 2nd, 2004] WINNERS

Oregon's doomed chalked up a final victory, when a federal appeals court thwacked John Ashcroft with a rolled-up newspaper for trying scuttle the state's voter-approved death-with-dignity law. While the Bush administration ponders new ways to thwart the will of Oregon's people, the state's terminally ill regained the right to end their lives when they choose. Pollsters were mum on how many votes this might cost John Kerry.

It was kind of a bummer for the medical-marijuana activists at the Oregon Green Cross last week when Clackamas County deputies carted off more than 100 of their pot plants from a greenhouse near Woodburn. But hope sprouts eternal--the group says the whole raid thing was a paperwork screw-up, and is already working to replant its crop.

The state's checkbook recorded a rare entry in the black, as Salem's spendthrifts licked their chops in anticipation of a $95.8-million tax windfall. The additional revenue, which tops expectations, is credited to a rebounding economy.

LOSERS

It's survived the roar of chainsaws, the devastation of forest fires, the sweaty embrace of treehuggers and the ministrations of federal land-management bureaucrats. But now the spotted owl faces another challenge: the barred owl, a pushy invader from back east, which is muscling its spotted cousin out of choice haunts in Oregon's old-growth forests. Biologists fear that Darwinian forces will cut short the spotted owls' parliament.

Fans of classic Keystone Kops routines may have harvested some jollies from the mistaken arrest (and two-week imprisonment) of Portland-area lawyer Brandon Mayfield on terror suspicions. But the FBI came out looking like terminal incompetents after they admitted they jailed the Muslim convert on faulty fingerprint evidence--and after it proved the agent responsible fouled up in the past.

The Archdiocese of Portland, which says it's already stretched to its financial limit by abuse settlements, sucked up another round of PR bastinado with the filing of four new lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests under its charge.

Pity whoever is in charge of promoting tourism in Bly, Ore. The tiny agricultural hamlet got international publicity of the worst kind when a Muslim cleric in London was busted--and charged with plotting a terror training camp near Bly. Plans for a jihadi dude ranch never got off the ground.